What: Best of Ball State Dance Theatre: Past and Present
When: Dec. 10-12 at 7:30 p.m. and Dec. 13 at 2:30 p.m.
Where: University Theatre
Cost: Students-$12, General Public-$15, Faculty/Staff-$14, Senior Citizens-$13
In this semester’s Dance Theatre show, dancers and choreographers look to the past and the present as they create a work that fuses the two.
Half of the show’s eight pieces have been performed before and half are new. The show’s name exemplifies the concept: “Best of Ball State Dance Theatre: Past and Present.”
The four old dances have been “reset” for this show with new dancers and a new approach, while still using the old choreography.
“When you reset something from the past on new people, they bring a new approach to it that you maybe didn’t have,” said Audra Sokol, the show’s artistic director. “There’s definitely a different energy, a breath of fresh air to something that has been around for a while.”
Because some of the same choreographers are involved, dancers have an added opportunity to learn. They said they can see the ways that an individual artist’s perspective has changed over time.
One reset piece is “A Duet,” by assistant professor of dance Susan Koper, who created it four years ago. This time, however, she decided to change the music entirely, creating a piece with a completely different feel.
“What used to be this kind of sweet, humble dance is now this very moving, hungry and driving piece of work just by changing the music,” Sokol said.
Senior dance major Tyler Ring performed in the piece his freshman year, and has the opportunity to feature in it again this year. The dance pulled “a complete 180” from what it was then to what it is now, he said.
He also got to experience what it was like to teach his dance partner. He was the one being taught the first time around.
While Ring got to bring a new sense to a dance he had previous experience with, other dancers got to bring new life to old dances from as far back as 14 years ago.
“[These] pieces have already premiered, and it was up to us to bring a new energy to it,” said junior dance major Lacy Smith, who performs in six of the production’s pieces.
She performs in “For All its Invisibility,” which was choreographed by Koper as well. Smith described performing in this work as “an out of body experience.”
“I feel as though we are in outer space,” she said, “and the three of us are a different species that communicate through movement.”
Working with old pieces presented a unique challenge to the artists and meant that the dancers learned some of their choreography from video.
“Normally, we come into the studio and learn fresh choreography from the choreographer,” Smith said. “But there were a few times we had to learn from the video on our own.”
In addition to featuring dances both old and new, the show includes a variety of styles like ballet, character, modern, ethnic, tap and jazz.
The show also contains a variety of different emotions and settings, said Christie Bellish, a junior dance major, who performs in an older piece that Sokol choreographed.
“We have everything from magical storybook characters, to prim and proper 1950s housewives,” she said. “We go from serious modern pieces, to authentic Korean fan dancing, to a scandalous jazz number. This show has it all.”
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